Seagate Technology has begun
shipments of its first ever 3.5-inch drives utilizing the
Perpendicular Magnetic Recording method. Seagate's announcement came earlier today with the
introduction
of the Cheetah 15K.5 enterprise class hard drives which feature a
15,000RPM spindle speed and capacities of 73GB, 146GB and
300GB.

The platter density has been doubled
compared to the 15K.4 line of drives effectively reducing the number
of platters and heads by 50%. The 300GB model will feature a
4-platter design using 8 heads, the 146GB model will use 2 platters
with 4 heads and the 73GB drive will utilize a single platter with 2
heads. All three models will come in Fibre-Channel, Ultra320 SCSI, and Serial
Attached Storage interfaces at 400MB/sec, 320MB/sec, and 300MB/sec respectively.
They will feature a low 2ms latency and a 3.5ms average seek time
which matches the older 15K.4 line.

What has changed is the
performance with a great increase in transfer rates over the 15K.4
line. The sustained transfer rates have increased an average of
15-29MB/sec across all models with the help of the perpendicular
nature of the bits as well as the increased 16MB drive
buffers.

Power consumption has also dropped by up to 2 watts
in some models; mainly the Serial Attached Storage versions of the
Cheetah 15K.5.

The Cheetah 15K.5 has begun shipping to OEM customers, according to the press release, and is expected to distribution channels later this quarter. Seagate first introduced Perpendicular Magnetic
Recording in its Momentus
5400.3 series of notebook drives in mid-January which brought
160GB of capacity in a 2.5-inch form factor. Speaking with our
contact at Seagate, they had mentioned that we should see desktop
drives utilizing the PMR method hit the market by this summer.

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